cashdunn

[cashdunn]

TIL, The cycle of death and rebirth cruel cruel cruel cruel cruel cruel cruel cruel cruel cruel cruel cruel cruel cruel cruel cruel

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The Mirror / Зеркало (1975) dir. Andrei Tarkovsky

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Nice weather but very mentally ill today

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jadevassr​

“Yes! Fuck, I forgot about them. My mom used to play them all the time when she would make breakfast,” Jade beams. The stars on her ceiling still glow rather brightly despite being scratched up from living on the ceiling of her childhood bedroom. She doesn’t know what time it is, and she isn’t sure if it feels like the inside of her room was glowing blue or if it was maybe reaching daylight. She laughs at his attempt of taking off his shoes, stumbling in the dim light like an awkward giraffe. Jade eyes him curiously, the dark swoop of his hair giving him somewhat of a classic Hollywood beauty, she noticed. It didn’t help that he talked like that, like she could put a cowboy hat atop his head and they could ride off into the sunset. “Pack it up, Stanley Yelnats,” she teases. She’s surprised at their lack of distance, although it never occurred to her how used she was to being close with him in any other context – climbing trees, getting piggyback rides, jumping fences. At that moment, though, she can’t breathe the way she normally can because she can actually see all the tiny freckles dotting his jaw that she didn’t notice before. Before she knows it, his lips are on hers, and he tastes like whiskey and a bit of honey and maybe a mint leaf. Her hands are on the side of his neck as she reciprocates, as if this is what she was secretly asking for this whole time. They sigh into each other, melting, until Jade pulls away and blinks in a mild embarrassment. She yawns unconvincingly. “Later,” comes like a tiny promise, though she’s unsure if he’ll remember at all. “You’re really out of it. I– um, we should go to bed.” She tries not to be dismissive, she tries not to really look at him at all, because if she does, she might burst, and instead pulls the sheets over their bodies.

Sometimes when Cash is drunk it feels like dualism has taken over his perception – the good and the bad exist at polar opposite ends of the spectrum. For a few moments he is lost in the kiss, and then lost simply in looking at Jade, feeling a warmth that has less to do with the temperature of the room than it does with how close they are to each other. And then the moment breaks, and Jade shifts away from him, and he understands, he does, but he can’t help feeling somewhat lost – the expression on her face has unmoored him. “Yeah,” he agrees, because it’s all he can really do, and nearly stumbles off the bed onto the comforter she’s laid out, but before he can do that she’s pulled the sheets over the both of them, so he just shifts so that he’s facing away from her, giving her an imitation of privacy because it’s the least he can do at the moment. He isn’t awake much longer.

Consciousness brings a sharp headache and nausea that rolls over him in heavy waves. He opens his eyes and, almost immediately, shuts them. Sleep is going to be an impossibility; the best thing he can do, he thinks, is get back to his dorm, where he can be a mess in peace until he’s ready to face humanity again. His phone is still in his pocket, and tells him the time is ten in the morning. It also informs him that his battery is at 10%. He manages to sit up without throwing up, which is a good sign. Halfway through congratulating himself on achieving this milestone, he looks at Jade, and something akin to a memory that is too soft-edged and dark to make sense floats up to sit on the surface of his mind. “Good morning,” he says, voice coming out rough as befits his hangover. He nearly adds ‘what happened last night,’ but something stops him.

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harrisonhadlee​

                    Weed. W-e-e-d. He’d caught a whiff of something particular but it was singed with typical smell of tobacco so he didn’t think anything of it. Until now. Now all he could seem to smell was that thick aroma of what could only be described as saccharine skunk. Weed. He’d done it before, but he had known what he’d been getting into every time, and it had always been a pointless ‘puff and pass ordeal’. With half his hybrid joint already gone now he felt stuck in a dense cloud. He exhaled— the wind blew in, shaking some of the trees around them and it didn’t feel like coincidence. Harry finally blinked, moving a leg, suddenly aware of how they were specifically sitting atop the table, “Yeah,” He nodded, eyes laden, “Yeah, I’m alright I just don’t do this–” He turned his head around, swiveling the cigarette resting limp between his fingers, “–did you hear that?” The male scanned the brush, unsure of what he’d heard, something between a police siren and a cat, “You know… I saw a few Lynxes this one time.” Harry stated turning back to the other, serious, “They have beards.”

“They got little sideburns,” Cash agrees, relieved that Harry does not, at least so far, seem to be having a terrible time. “I don’t think there are any ‘round here though.” By ‘round here, he doesn’t mean Vermont, but rather the general vicinity. Eyes still on Harry, wary of a turn for the worse – though this isn’t a strain that lends itself to fits of anxiety, Cash doesn’t like smoking anything that might make his thoughts too quick – that may or may not be looming on the horizon. “If there are, doubt they’ll be bothering us. Where’d you see ‘em?” He stares at an outcropping of trees and thinks about Lynxes, which turns organically into thinking about coyotes. They were relative newcomers to Alaska, but he’d seen one right before leaving for college. He’d been high and it had been the middle of the night and there had been ten feet between the two of them, give or take. Strange, but not unheard of. The dogs hadn’t liked it. “They look sorta Amish,” he adds. “Lynxes, I mean. It’s that kinda beard.”

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jadevassr​

“Uh huh. That and astrology and witches and the fifth dimension,” Jade replies. She smiles at him knowingly. Jade has gone through her own personal transformations in the form of other substances, opening new worlds and blowing out candles and casting stupid spells ever since she could walk. She really did believe in it, she promised, but sometimes it was a way to cope with a reality shouldn’t handle. Sometimes when she was around Cash, she thought she was looking into a mirror. Both of their wild brown hair, both with eyes that have seen things most Yates students never have. They had the same cadence often, the backyard neighbor mentality, two people who both had the same tendency of running away. “Thanks,” she says, taking off her socks and plunging onto her bed, looking straight up to her ceiling where glow in the dark stars were plastered. “I’m okay. I just feel better knowing that you’re not in a random dumpster puking or whatever.” She gently gestures him onto the bed. 

“Well shit, you got me beat,” he says. “California Soul, Let the Sunshine In? That Fifth Dimension?” A few notes of Let the Sunshine In play in his head for a moment, and he lets them, but comes to a dead end – he doesn’t know how to go beyond this particular melodic loop. He follows her gaze to the ceiling, to the faintly glowing stars on the ceiling, missing her gesture by a mile. He moves to sit under them, meaning to end up on the corner of the comforter closest to her, but something goes wrong and he ends up sitting on the very corner of the bed anyway, gazing up, half leaning on the headboard for support. He still has his shoes on, makes an attempt at getting rid of them and manages, even in his nearly blacked out state, to get them off his feet and toss them beyond the comforter, where they lie, laces akimbo, on the floor. “That’s mighty kind of you,” he says, and turns to her, finding them closer than he’d initially anticipated, and it’s in that moment that he’s staring her right in the eyes that he sees fit to close the distance between them. The kiss is hesitant at first, thought not as hesitant as it probably should be, but he’s drunk and his capacity for caution is heavily lacking at the moment.

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The atmosphere calms, or else Cash becomes acclimated to it, to the way the grass moves with the wind, to Harry by his side. Harry hovers somewhere between friend and acquaintance, is perhaps closer to acquaintance, though Cash isThat initial weight that always comes with a cigarette fades over him and for just a moment it’s almost unpleasant. Harry’s talking, the meaning of the words doing a slow fade in. “Wh- Oh. Shit, man, I thought you knew. ‘M sorry. There’s some weed mixed in there. ‘S why it smells like, uh. Like weed.” Cash is still capable of concern in this state – he’s not really all that stoned, having gotten more or less used to this strain by now. “You gonna be alright?”

@cashdunn​

                    He hadn’t seen Cash really since his birthday, one of the ‘floaters’ of his friend group the male really didn’t seem to linger for long. Come to think of it Harry didn’t actually know him too well at all, just at a face, like that he was from Texas, and in a way that he seemed to embody it. Also that he rolled his own cigarettes, which, was landed Harry exactly in the position that he was in now. Sitting on the outskirts of campus grounds near the brush he’d been handed one after being asked. After a few minutes of smoking he’d begun to feel strange. Strange in a way that was familiar but not typical��� not a nicotine buzz, but something that made him feel heavy in a way that he couldn’t place his finger on. He began replaying how they’d gotten here in his head. Hastings, field, picnic table. The male looked at his satchel beside him, perched against the table and he was afraid that if he stood up he’d topple over. He watched the smoke rise from the cigarette he held, eyes narrowing, and registered the flicking of a lighter beside him, “… What’s in this?” Harry managed to ask, voice suddenly detached and minutely laden. Or was he just merely imagining all of this?

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tcbywheeler​

Upon recognizing his company, the smile on Toby’s face is automatic. It’s easy for him to grow fond, a particularly kind smile from a stranger had been the cause once, but with Cash it’s almost endlessly so. He did have the awareness to wonder what Cash thought of Toby, just knew that if it came down to it he’d be bold enough to describe him as a close friend and that that was enough for him, “Are you suggesting that I’m forgettable?” Instead of his mouth quirking into a teasing grin, Toby’s features remained curiously stiff - sarcasm was something he was just getting the grasp of. It was easy to forget that it was meant to play as a joke, “Thank you,” he mumbled automatically, grasping at the joint out of trained obedience, “They could come back. Would you not feel awkward if they got upset at us? I might laugh. I found out I laugh now when I feel awkward. It’s occasionally distressing,” Though he’s only held onto the joint for a few seconds, he holds it back out towards Cash pointedly, but it’s paired with an encouraging smile. He wouldn’t be distraught by any means if his counterpart were insistent on Toby holding onto it, but he’d feel more comfortable with his hands free, feeling unsure with the spliff dangling precariously between his fingers, “I didn’t think about payment. Do you require payment? I was hoping my company would suffice, you’ll be stretched to get anything else worthy from me right now.”

“I’m as forgettable as you are,” he says, a teasing edge to it. “Don’t go thinkin’ you’re special.” There is some leftover weed on the table; Cash gathers it up, taking out one of his own rolling papers, a cigarette – American Spirit – and sprinkles tobacco down the length of it before adding the ground up weed and wrapping it up in a thin little bundle. He looks up – Toby is holding the joint out precariously as if he isn’t sure whether to hand it to Cash or not. Cash holds out his hand, palm open, in case Toby feels like dropping the joint into it. “Nah, I don’t need it. Your company’s more than enough.”

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darbyalbright​

She could only take Cash in small doses most times. He was intense, and oftentimes strange. But she still liked being around him for the most part, when he didn’t get too on her nerves. And she would be lying if she didn’t admit she liked looking at his face. An eye roll met his statement, slipping into the bar, running fingers through her hair until they met a knot, curling around it as she shot a look back at him. “You might be more tolerable if that were true. You’d be like a sexy, mute Ken doll. I prefer it when men don’t have thoughts,” she quipped, walking towards the bar and settling into a stool. Her legs swiftly crossed, bitten-red lips shooting him a small smile as she leaned onto her elbows towards him. “I think you should buy my drink. Compensation for hanging out with you. I said fuck charity.”

Cash can’t begin to see himself as a Ken doll – but then, can one really be objective when it comes to the self? The image they project to the world? He doesn’t know shit, and that should really be all he knows. He doesn’t really find the comparison flattering. He won’t mention it. “I think I might prefer it if I didn’t have thoughts,” he says honestly. They’re at the bar now, her settled onto a stool already, him between two of them, resting an elbow on the edge of a counter. “Yeah, sounds about right. What’re you drinking?”

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delilahastor​

Delilah blinked with a mute expression, processing this. “A mouse lifespan, Cash. He’s quite literally a mouse. Did you think Stuart Little was a human trapped inside a mouse’s body?” Only then did she extract the cigarette from her lips. “Talk about a dark twist on a children’s classic. His lips say I’m home, Mrs Little, but his eyes? They’re screaming.“ Approaching, she reached to pluck his lighter off him so delicately it might as well have been carried with the breeze, tender as a grandmother’s kiss to the cheek – stark contrast to what some expected of her from the apathy in her expression, the sheer lack of anything. She wasn’t angry, though. That was part of the problem. It might be nice, she supposed, to be something. “Bold of you to assume Stuart can’t screech the house down. Don’t underestimate his prowess. From little acorns grow mighty oaks,” came as Delilah struck a flame to life, licking at her Sobranie’s end. She tucked the lighter into his pocket, after. “Not very chivalrous, blue-balling me like that. Forcing me to take matters into my own hands. I’ll remember this when the reaping comes.”

“Don’t know. I never read Stuart Little.” Cash is still as he drinks all of this in, letting his lighter go Delilah’s way without any pushback when she takes it from him, gentle as anything. “‘He would kinda be a human trapped in a mouse body, though, wouldn’t he? He’s got human thoughts. Can’t see any difference between bein’ born a mouse with the capacity for individualism n’ bein’ born a human. He’s gonna be just as aware of his rodent lifespan as we are of our human lifespan, ain’t he? He’s just got a smaller time frame. Hell, maybe that’s a mercy.” The lighter is returned to him. He reaches a hand into the pocket where it now rests, curls that hand around it, feels the warmth still caught in the metal. He nearly smiles at her. “You in league with the reaper now, Delilah?”

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holbrooktm​

adam grinned as he approached cash.  he wasn’t expecting to find anyone in this corner of the library, but if he was going to have to socialize, he was glad it was going to be with his friend.  whatever feeble attempt at studying he was going to be doing would just have to wait.  oh well.  “i didn’t realize there was a smoking section of the library.”  adam took a seat next to cash and accepted a cigarette.  was it usually his thing?  no.  but he was bored and looking for something to do, so.  “i’m sure this would look a lot less sketchy outside, but hey.  i’m all about the vibe,”  he said as he lit up the cigarette and took a drag.  sometimes it was like he was making up for lost time, given that he didn’t have much of a rebellious streak in high school.  what else was college for?

“The fire alarm in this section don’t work,” says Cash, who found out about this flaw in the system entirely by accident one day when he’d witnessed a moment of arson. “And the librarians avoid it.” And there was something about the atmosphere today – it was rain without rain, a damp that Cash was sure would get into his joints if he weren’t careful. So he was smoking inside. He nearly pointed out to Adam that he did, for the most part, not do shit like this, but it seemed more or less pointless, and besides, might come across as more of a protest than a statement of fact. He offered Adam his lighter.

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jadevassr​

“The backrooms,” Jade answered. She wasn’t sure if this was what he was talking about, but it was the first thing that came to mind. “Like weird otherly dimensions in the pockets of our reality. That’s what Winthrop feels like at least!” She looked at him with an unfathomable expression, her eyes soft. He was absolutely out of it and in that state he somehow looked the most vulnerable. Almost calm and without the usual guarded tension in his face. She turned her back to him once again, stripping off her last piece which left her to shiver for a second once she’d noticed the stillness and the slight draft in her bedroom. She pulled on a t-shirt quickly. “Ha, okay. I don’t have rabies, you know. Suit yourself. Up,” she gestured for him to move from his space as she pulled an extra comforter out of the closet and laid it down, taking a mindless effort to lay it out like a sleeping bag. “You okay?” The question was like a bubble in the air, something to fill the quiet space. “I can always sleep on the futon or Ines’ bed. She’s away for the weekend, so.”

“You believe in all that shit? Alternate dimensions?” Cash understands  on some level that time isn’t linear, understands that it changes as  gravity does, that it runs at different speeds at the top of a mountain,  at the bottom of a river, on other planets, though he doesn’t know the  numbers behind it all, especially not when he is as drunk as he is. And  he understands on some level that there may be universe running parallel  to this one, that their universe may go around in circles, may be a  copy of a copy of a copy of a copy. He can’t articulate any of this at  the moment, but his softened mind tries to shape itself around the  feeling of it until his attention is pulled to Jade again. She’s changed  her clothes, though her face is still made up and it makes her look  like a wild thing, standing there in her nondescript t-shirt. He moves  out of the way when bidden, watching the comforter settle against the  floor, and he mumbles, several moments too late: “Don’t think you have  rabies.” A pause. “Sorry, uh, yeah. I’m okay. Are you?” He doesn’t know  why he asks – partially common courtesy, a question for a question, but  there is genuine wonder there, too.

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jadevassr​

“Uh huh,” Jade nodded, mindlessly, half-listening to what he was saying. “Liminal space in all. Hey.” She nodded at the girl smoking and leaning on an open door. Tracy. She was blonde and mullet-headed and happened to not join the Yates in Wonderland event. She gestured at Cash. “Oh, him? He needs sleep. A Hastings baby.” She twirled her fingers in a waving goodbye motion and opened the door to her room, which was lit by a single lamp that turned the walls a blushed red. She lit the melting wax candles on her bureau, opening a drawer to find an oversized t-shirt, Stripping off her skirt, fishnets, and blazer, she was left in a corset. Harley Quinn off the job. “You can sleep wherever. Bed, futon, or floor, I don’t care. It’s like summer camp all over again.” She frowned at his state – it seemed as if he wasn’t really in his own body, eyes glazed over with a dopey smile. HIs face seemed transfixed by hers as he stood there quietly. “Why are you staring at me like that? You’re creeping me out, Dunn. Need some water?”

“I think it’s all liminal spaces all the way down. Just... Nothin’ feels all that real or all that– I read this thing all about these spaces that are sort of without, uh...” If he had a point, he lost it when they passed the smoking blonde, someone Cash might have seen before once or twice in the halls of Yates but could not have named if you’d put a gun up to his head. His thoughts felt fragmented but were coming in warmer tones than usual, if thoughts could be judged on a sliding colour scale. He felt half out of his body, half weighed down by it. He stared as she lit each candle in turn, and that stare moved to her face. He continued to exist in that half-awake state as she changed, drunk enough that it didn’t really seem out of the ordinary until she told him he’d been staring. Horrified at himself, he looked away, blushing slightly. “Sorry. Zoned out. ’M okay.” He wasn’t sure he was capable of drinking water at the moment. “I’ll take the floor,” he added.

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“You think you got a brand?” The stairs were tricky and he felt that he was already in some half remembered dream as he followed her up them, shoulder hugging the wall as he went. Winthrop was familiar and unfamiliar all at once, the lighting of the hallways feeling harsh against the night they had just come in from. “We’re on that–” He paused, frowned. He was thinking of an eternal staircase. “S’ like an optical illusion,” he said, as if it made perfect sense. @jadevassr

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